Riot Games has today been caught in a predicament where it used the wrong image of an esports player—a famous Dota 2 veteran—instead of a rising North American TFT star in promotional material on social media.
Thanks to esports’ unique culture, there aren’t too many players who share the same names. When they do, it can lead to some funny moments, just like this one.
In a now-deleted tweet, Riot used an image of Russian Dota 2 player Alexander “TORONTOTOKYO” Khertek instead of American TFT talent torontotokyo. They both share the same name, with the only difference between the two being the Dota 2 player has his entire name capitalized, while the other is all lowercase.
Soon after the error popped up, caster and analyst Dan “Frodan” Chou pointed it out, keeping a record of the mistake after Riot deleted all the tweets.
These two players couldn’t be more different outside of their names. Not only do they come from different regions, but they also have very different histories. Where TORONTOTOKYO is a well-established Russian pro who debuted in Dota 2 back in 2015 and won The International in 2021 for Team Spirit, torontotokyo is an up-and-coming American player who joined competitive play mid-2022 and hit their best result at the NA Last Chance Qualifier, finishing second to qualify to the Runeterra Reforged Championship.
They got that final slot from his region and got rewarded with a chance to win a worldwide competition—as well as a minor mistake from Riot’s side.
One can imagine how it happened: someone at Riot quickly looked up images for the TFT player, and couldn’t find any outside of the other player who shared the same name.
The name itself is relatively unique, so the odds two players in esports share this name is low. In fact, we know for a fact why the Dota 2 player came up with that name. Originally having the nickname Toronto, and loving Japanese culture, he just decided to stick Tokyo onto it. We don’t have a reason why the TFT player chose the same name, but it is funny this minute overlap led to an error from event organizers.
Now the error has been fixed, I think the people at Riot overseeing the Runeterra Reforged Championship are going to be more aware of two things: the Dota 2 player TORONTOTOKYO, and likely getting an image of torontotokyo for the broadcast in case they get to the same heights as the player that shares their name in NA’s defense of their previous Championship title.
Dot Esports tried to reach out to torontotokyo (the TFT player) for context as to why they chose their name, but have not heard back at the time of writing.
